Writing Your First Book, Pt. 3

You. Need to, revise. - Christopher Waulken.

How you revise your work is pretty much going to dictate how you should write it.

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. You need to revise your work, and you should know that before you even start writing. I know a lot of talented people who never revise their work, and that's the reason they'll never become great writers. You know who you are.

You.

Need.

To.

Revise.

Are there any more ways I can say that to get you to understand?

1) You need to revise.
2) Necessitas a editar.
3) .esiver ot deen ouY


Revising is a crucial skill of any writer. And it's not just to pick out errors like like this one, but also to prune out awkward, flowery strange sentiments that just take up space and go on and on forever and are just structureless blobs of excessive verbosity. Like this paragraph.

The art of revision is corrupted by how we teach writing, at least in America. In student works we have a mandatory word count and so revising often means we're looking for areas to insert superfluous content rather than remove it. This is where many people pick up appalling writing habits. You could probably populate a bestiary with the individual offenses, but I won't here. This is, after all, a series on how to write your first book, not how to write well.

Revising is rarely about putting stuff in. It is nearly always about taking stuff out.

Revision doesn't happen in isolation, either. It is a constant process. You finish a sentence, you reread it. You finish a paragraph, you reread it. And so on for every page and every chapter. After you finish the book, you reread, not once, but multiple times. You read it again and again until you begin to loathe your own work slightly. That only means you need to step back for a week or so, and come back to it with fresh eyes.

Everyone has their own style of doing it. For example, I inserted this paragraph after the third revision, after reading this to myself and realizing that I had not given any concrete examples on how to effectively revise. A common method is to read what you are writing out loud to see if it feels natural as you say it, which is what I'm doing right now. This is useful for refining your style. However, this edit is an example of fixing a structural issue -- I noticed that I hadn't covered some important topics, and so I went back and inserted them in. Such an omission can only be noticed by someone willing to reflect on what they've just written. You have to ask yourself: have I communicated the ideas I intended to communicate? Is there anything that isn't necessary to this article?

It's not just your eyes, it's other people's eyes, their fresh, fresh eyes. (1) (4)

A complete writing team includes at least: 1 Writer, 1 Test Reader, 1 Editor.

If you are self-publishing, there is an awfully good chance you can't afford a professional editor. Good editors are expensive, and while some are "worth every penny", there are amateurs available who either don't have the critical skills available or use their leverage over you to be nasty. There are still other "writing grognards" who have a crystallized view of what constitutes "good writing" and pretty much take the hammer to Writing Heresy. (5) And yet, the editor is every bit as valuable to making a piece work as the writer themselves; they are the ones who will make your writing good (6) there are things that you just can't see but they can. It comes down this: you need an editor, but you can't rely on the editor to make your writing good.

And nor should they. Turning opaque prose into something readable is just exhausting. You'll find your editors dropping out of the sky if you send them off your first raw, unrevised draft. Even if you use an editor, you need to make sure your work is pretty well refined by the time they see it. If you need your editor to rewrite everything for you, just do everyone a favor and hire yourself a ghostwriter. (2)

The test reader is a friend, family member, or significant other that loves you enough to put with your work. The test reader's primary job is to be honest where others might be a little diplomatic. In other words, they tell you when you suck. If you're going to put your work out commercially, developing a thick skin and professional attitude is a must, and if you can't be your own worst critic you definitely should get your actual worst critic as a test reader.

Everyone writes shit that blows. Where the skill comes in is deleting said shit before anyone has a chance to read it. (3) (7)



(1) This joke shamelessly stolen from Hanon Ondricek.

(2) BTW, I'm going to start an indie editing and ghostwriting service in the future, so if you're looking for one email me.

(3) This article was revised four times. This is a very low number.

(4) This joke worked better when the previous paragraph didn't exist, but since it exists now the joke doesn't quite work. However, I've decided to keep it to illustrate exactly what I mean by revision.

(5) I've inappropriately inserted my own pet peeve when it isn't relevant to the paragraph, and at this point I haven't expounded on the virtues of a good editor so it seems like I'm discouraging people from getting an editor.

(6) Awkward sentence please revise.

(7) Now the number is five times and fuck it, it's done.

Writing Your First Book, Pt. 2

Before you even start writing your first page, there are a few considerations worth going through that will effect how your book will turn out. It is pretty rare that people are possessed by inspiration so awesome that they stomp out a novel in 2-3 days. Good ideas and structure take time. What you start writing is rarely what you actually end up with.

For me at least, when I first fill an empty page, my ideas are pretty shitty. It really starts with a wish fulfillment fantasy -- "Man, wouldn't it be awesome to be locked in a mansion with twenty horny babes." Whether it's a errant professionalism, some kind of aspiration to be a better artist, or just plain boredom, my plots become more and more complicated. I add layers -- "What if one of the girls in the mansion is a ghost?!" A little intrigue here and there. An interesting character flaw. And it keeps going -- "Maybe she's not really a ghost... and it's everyone else whose dead!!"

Sitting down and just writing ideas is pretty hard for me. I can only do that for ten minutes before I start playing Crusader Kings II. The brainstorming for me is in the execution... I'm doing something and then I think of something I want to play around with. That could mean I throw out everything I've done so far... perhaps thousands of words. I've done it before... I'll do it again. That's in stark contrast to a writer such as BBBen, who will sit down and write pages and pages and pages of notes before committing even the introduction. That's a skill I want to have.

If you have a plot that's of any kind of complicated, some measure of planning is basically required, or else you're just writing Lost, you're throwing twists at the viewer with vague promises that it'll all make sense eventually. That's a cynical way to write a story. On the other hand, you don't have to map out the story all beforehand. You have to leave some room for the plot to expand and change according to the direction of the story. My plot outline for Fencing Academy came out to be a page long, and I sort of stuck to that. I have other notes, but it's all world building and notes for myself in case I forget certain things.

Basically, if you are anything like me, it's very likely you'll throw out your first dozen efforts to write a novel. But that's good. You'll get a feel for the characters. Whose important. Whose boring. After you sleep on your failed efforts for a while, you'll come back and write something better than that.

And maybe throw that out too, just to start it anew.

Writing Your First Book, Pt. 1

A couple of days ago I submitted the second draft of Fencing Academy to my publisher. A day after that, I saw the cover art (which is REALLY cool!) Needless to say, I can't wait to share it with you all. I thought I'd write a few thoughts down on writing a book. Perhaps it would be helpful for those of you out there thinking about writing one.

The process of writing says something about you. Not to sound cheesy, you do learn an awful lot about yourself. You discover whether you're a morning or evening person (me, I'm a morning person, though I've always fancied myself a night person), what sort of work flow works best for you, and whether you're a do-it-all-now-and-revise-later person or a make-sure-it's-perfect-then-move-on person.

The late-and-great Kurt Vonnegut reckons there are two types of writers, and he gave funny names to them which I can't remember offhand. The first type writes as quickly as possible before going back and taking a long period of revision. The second type writes slowly and surely, making sure each sentence is perfect before moving on. The good thing about the first type of writer is that they get rough drafts out very quickly. The good thing about the second type is that they don't really have to revise. There is no "superior" method, it's just what works for you. I had always thought I was in the first group. It turns I'm in the second group.

The point is that you don't know these things until you find them out yourself. Until you learn them, it's very difficult to follow projects through to completion. I think that's the value in starting big projects you may or may not finish, you find this stuff out. And as you find them out, you learn, finally, how to follow through. So if you're the sort with a billion aborted projects, don't despair. You're doing the right thing, keep aborting projects until you get the hang of things.

The next part of this series will come before publication, and it will go deeper into challenges you might face. You'll get to see the cover art before then, hopefully. The cover is so good I feel a little inferior to it... I only hope the story is as good as the art!

Another Wannabe's Laws of Using Character Descriptions

I. Pick three to four distinctive characteristics for each character. At least two of them must be something other than eye color and hair color.

These aren't the only physical characteristics of your character, but they will be the ones the reader will use to draw a rough picture in their mind of what the character looks like. Possibilities: a mole, some acne, stubble, square chin, long nose, weird ears, lanky arms, etc. Other parts of the body can be described but it is only these ones that "distinguish" this person from other people.

II. Repeatedly draw attention to these characteristics as the character does stuff, not just when writing an obligatory character description paragraph.

The player is likely to forget the distinctive features of characters. Therefore, you want to refer back them regularly. Have the character brush aside their black hair from their face, reach out with lanky arms, have their tits bounce as they jump, the sun reflect off their blue eyes, scratch a scar, and on and on. This is an efficient way to write, since it does multiple things a) makes characters a little more memorable b) bring attention to the NPC's mannerisms c) establishes a real physical presence for the NPC. Not only will this make your writing more interesting, but the reader will gradually get a strong idea of what they look like.

III. Drop the description when the player first meets the NPC.

Interactive Fiction has a unique advantage in that the reader can summon up a physical description when they examine the character. However, you still want to describe a new character, because it makes sense that you'd take an appraisal of someone as you meet them. It's annoying if the player is forced to examine a character just to find out what they look like.

IV. Don't use numbers in your description.

Exception: if the PC is the sort of person that would notice someone's measurements just by looking at them. Otherwise, it's weird if you list someone's bust or cup size when "large tits", "ample bosom", "narrow waist" etc would do the job just as well.

V. Efficient character descriptions are better than long and detailed ones.

Good writers are sentence multi-taskers and can do multiple things with fewer words. Take this example.

George is still youngish. He's still got cheeks plump with a bit of baby fat and a mop of unruly, brown hair. His face seems impressed with child-like wonder combined with newly-found adolescent cynicism. At least, he kinda does when he wears his glasses. He has blue eyes.

 Compare it with this:

George still has cheeks plump with baby fat and a mop of unruly, brown hair. His blue eyes carry, in equal measure, innocence and newly-found adolescent cynicism. At least he kinda does when he wears his glasses.

As you can see, the second paragraph deletes both what is implied (George's youth is implied by his cheeks with baby fat) and combines what is necessary (the sentence about his eyes into the paragraph about his expression).

VI. Go forth and write AIF.

Not technically a law of using character descriptions, but all the same. Write more AIF.